Andrew James (POJ)

In August 2018, I and a dozen of my friends took on the ridiculous challenge we called "Walking the Rock". What does that mean exactly? It means we were dropped off at a friend's house in Little Rock, Arkansas, stayed the night, woke up at 6:30 AM, and left on foot at 7 am for our hometown of Conway, exactly 30 miles away. Were we crazy? Were we insane? Were we out of our minds? Was it grueling? Did it nearly kill us? The answer to all of these questions is yes. Well, maybe not the last one. We all survived. At first it was fine. walking together as a pack in the early morning in a nice part of Little Rock by the river was nice. The weather was good, nature was doing its thing, other people were out exercising. It was a good time for the first 3-4 miles. We crossed the Big Dam Bridge over the river and into North Little Rock. It was fun. Soon, however, the August sun would begin to come up, everyone's legs would begin to be sore, we'd all get hungry and t

UCA's new Health Sciences building. It started with good news. The city of Conway announced they would resurface Donaghey Avenue starting in the Summer of 2019. This road desperately needed it, so I, as a resident of Conway who drives this road frequently, was excited to come back next semester to a road not filled with potholes. I was naive. As it turns out, in order for Donaghey to be resurfaced, Conway Corp would have to dig up basically the entire road little by little and replace underground pipes before the resurfacing could begin. Admittedly I don’t know if that process started in summer of 2019 or not, I was in Thailand in that summer, so I had no idea what happened in Conway (except for the UCA library sign controversy. Somehow that news managed to be heard on the other side of the globe), but when I returned the next semester, I was very much disappointed. Not only was the road just as terrible as it has always been, but Conway Corp was doing their digging r

Scrutiny of Russell Moore (pictured) raises questions on where values lie The Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest Protestant Christian denomination, is bringing Dr. Russell Moore, president of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Committee, as well as the ERLC itself under scrutiny to determine whether they deserve funding from the church’s Cooperative Program fund. As first reported in the Baptist Press, the church’s official news outlet, the ERLC, the public policy division of the SBC, is being investigated for whether or not it deserves funds from the Cooperative Program, which is the church’s main source of funding for its various programs. Dr Moore, the ERLC’s president, has been a vocal critic of President Donald Trump since the 2016 election season, calling him an "arrogant huckster" in 2016. Speculation has risen that churches have withheld funding for the Cooperative Program due to Moore’s criticism of the president, and that this is an attem

I was blessed to be able to spend 2 weeks this past summer in Mae Sot Thailand. Mae Sot is a decent-sized city in a rural part of the country. It's also the last stop before you reach Myanmar, as it lies right on the other side of the Moei River. As a border city, Mae Sot is filled with immigrants and refugees from neighboring Myanmar. The area is full of both Thai and Burmese people. Though the media often focuses on Rohingya Muslims when it comes to refugees from Myanmar, in Mae Sot you'll find different groups of Burmese people, also fleeing Myanmar. Mae Sot unfortunately exhibits the same issues found in America and throughout the world, particularly rampant discrimination against immigrants and refugees. Burmese people are considered "lesser than" and only Thai children are allowed to get a formal government education. The group I travelled with worked primarily in English teaching and in manual labor, all led by a local Thai pastor who goes by Michael

Poster for Bee Movie (2007) The Bee Movie (2007, directed by Simon Smith and Steve Hickner) presents itself as a fun kids' movie, starring the lovable Jerry Seinfeld, but upon closer examination, it serves as a revolutionary piece against the bourgeoi-bee. The bees pretty clearly represent the working class. Their hive is also pretty much a communist society as well. The bees collectively work for one (likely state-owned) company, Honex (if they’re not in the military/being pollen jocks) and they all collectively enjoy the fruits of their labor. It’s a communist system. The human world, however, is not. As the bees are the working class on the macroscopic level, the humans (more specifically the food companies and to a lesser extent Ken) are the bourgeoisie. This is pretty evident. Quotes such as “They make the honey, we make the money”, etc. express this. They oppress the working class and extort the fruit of their labor for themselves. Smith and Hickner (and Seinfeld) ar